Henry Barschall, Nuclear Physicist

OBITUARIES

February 9, 1997|The New York Times

Dr. Henry Barschall, a nuclear physicist who carried out early experiments with neutrons, helped develop the atomic bomb in World War II, then saw his laboratory destroyed by a bomb during the Vietnam War era, died on Tuesday at his home in Madison, Wis. He was 81.

The cause of death was liver cancer, family members said.

Dr. Barschall contributed to the understanding of neutron physics and its applications to medical radiotherapy and fusion technology. He began using particle accelerators at the University of Wisconsin in the 1940s to test the scattering of fast neutrons.

"His work marked the first time that the neutron data could be understood in a simple way," said Dr. Hugh Richards, a retired University of Wisconsin physics professor.

In World War II, Dr. Barschall joined the team at Los Alamos, N.M., that developed the atomic bomb. On July 16, 1945, he helped monitor the shock wave from the first nuclear test, at the Trinity site, near the White Sands proving grounds. More than 20 years after he joined the University of Wisconsin, campus protests against the Vietnam War became violent. On Aug. 24, 1970, a bomb exploded before dawn at the university building that housed Dr. Barschall's laboratory and the U.S. Army Math Research Center. One student was killed, several people were injured, and the work of several professors was destroyed.

"He was very shaken up, very perturbed," Richards said. "He never got back into nuclear physics."